


intermission (a sunday kind of love)

by blueincandescence



Series: all's fair in love and cold war [6]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Ballet, F/M, Smut, Undercover, and in July, basically Illya and Gaby have a nice day, because they deserve it, because we deserve summer, gross abuse of metaphor, it's mutual, like it's way indulgent, lllya loves his girl, no good without evil no fluff without angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:05:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8980960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueincandescence/pseuds/blueincandescence
Summary: In the middle of an undercover mission at an international ballet exhibition in Paris, Gaby and Illya take advantage of a long, hot Sunday off.(For anyone not interested in Explicit works, the chapters are rated very differently. If you skip chapters 4 and 5, you'll be safely in Teen territory.)





	1. spymaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thoughtsthatfester](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtsthatfester/gifts).



> **thoughtsthatfester's holiday exchange prompt:** Gaby and Illya must go undercover as a ballerina and her private instructor. He is a strict, demanding instructor but always takes the time to stretch her out, massage her sore muscles, and keep her bed warm. Solo is undercover as Gaby's costume designer. He and Illya spend a lot of time fighting over tutus. (E)
> 
> Happy holidays, thoughtsthatfester! :D

18 JULY 1964

Illya is sweating when he arrives fifteen minutes before the scheduled appointment with the asset. The narrow, forgotten practice room swelters with mid-July heat. The effort to unjam the windows, prop open the roof door, and drag over the rickety fan means his shirt is soaked through by the time Gaby should be arriving with Sabra. Five, ten minutes crawl by. Illya is annoyed but resigned. In true prima ballerina fashion, the asset has proved difficult to manage, even with Gaby in charge of fighting spitfire with spitfire.

He busies himself setting out the gadgetry Sabra must understand inside out if she is to collect useful information on her THRUSH doyen lover without being caught. And Illya very much wants her not to be caught. For all her mulishness, the Argentine-German would not have agreed to assist UNCLE were she not also brave, principled. The asset is much like Gaby in these and a dozen other respects. New likenesses occur to Illya whenever he imagines Sabra alone in the lion’s den.

At half-past, Gaby knocks the code he made her practice, eyes rolling, and Illya opens the inside door. He frowns at the paper bags she carries and the empty hall behind her.

Under a gossamer headscarf and oversized sunglasses, Gaby beams good morning as she breezes in. Hot weather suits her tan skin and light bones.

Taking the paper bags handed to him, Illya directs his frown at baguettes, produce, and wine. “What is this?”

Agreeably, she says, “It is almost too hot to eat, isn’t it? But I thought you’d object to fasting.” She unties the scarf, the dampened strands of her hair revealing that she is not as immune to the humidity as her bright mood would indicate.

Setting down the bags in the small kitchenette but hanging onto his patience, Illya tries, “I meant where is Sabra?”

Gaby plucks off a fat, purple grape. Through its guts, she says, “Paris is sizzling. Enzo gave the company the entire day off. He was always looking after us girls like that in Berlin. The French know how to live.” She winks.

Illya’s frown becomes a scowl for the change in plans — and, he won’t mention, Gaby’s praise for her one-time ballet master and undeserving lover. Enzo Lefebvre lived for himself and took advantage. Illya demands, “Why isn’t Sabra with you?”

Hips swaying on her approach, Gaby peels his soaked shirt away from his chest. “You poor glacier.”

He cannot afford to lighten when Gaby thumbs the sweat from his chin to place a kiss there. Clasping his fingers around her thin wrist, he reminds her, “We’re here for the asset, not to live like the French.”

The sharp uptick of her eyebrow pricks her levity. “Nor to indulge your balletomane inclinations, Instruktor Petrov?”

Illya sighs. It is true he has let himself be distracted on this mission. Six weeks behind the Iron Curtain, each day surer he would never have her again, wore him down. Wears him down, still.

Cupping the warmth of her rouge cheeks, he amends, “Sabra must be trained. More, she must be watched.” His grip tightens, and he’s halfway out the door in his thoughts. “She could be at the airport right now.”

“Train station,” Gaby corrects, stepping away. “I escorted her myself. That’s why I was late.” She bites into another grape. “That and the Sunday market.”

Alarm rolls through Illya. “You let her go?” Without Sabra, UNCLE would need to fill Julius von Kleist’s bed with another spirited ballerina. He stares hard at Gaby, finding it difficult to breathe in the clammy air.

Her nostrils flare with similar effort. “What I did — as agent in command of this operation — is respond to the situation as I deemed fit. UNCLE needs Sabra more than she needs us, and she knows it. Her cooperation has always been tenuous. Better she leave now than slip out of Buenos Aires in two weeks, raising suspicion. So I called her bluff. She’ll have the space today to make her choice, and she’ll honor it.”

If he is a glacier, he begins to melt on the spot for Gaby’s spymaster brilliance. Her strategy is less risk, more mitigation. Still, he is bound by duty to point out, “If Sabra does not require my attention, then I should tend to Soviet ballerinas.”

Hand on her hip, Gaby interjects, “KGB babysitter is your secondary function — first and foremost is my cover.” She pulls off her thin, colorful top, revealing the skin-tight black leotard beneath. “As my instructor has pointed out quite severely, I need constant practice to be convincing as a top professional.”

Illya takes her in his arms then. With the conviction of an apology, he says, “You think of everything.”

“Someday that won’t catch you surprised,” is Gaby’s retort. The bite is far less than he deserves, her mouth inviting him instead.

Against her lips, he inquires after his unbelievable luck. “We have all day? Like intermission,” he says, _Swan Lake_ on the mind.

“Curfew is at sunset,” she confirms. “Like a fairytale.” A bright smile spreads over her face. Given the dark sorts of fairytales the Germans favor, she is making a dare. Like any doomed protagonist, he is eager to take her up on it.


	2. swan maiden

Illya counts aloud with Gaby’s staccato steps. Lefebvre flattered her with one of the soloist parts during “Danse des Petits Cygnes” in a bid, Illya is convinced, to rekindle their old flame. Gaby misses the same beat she has missed two of seven tries, stopping when she does to glare at her ballet shoes like they have misled her.

Finding no reason to correct what she already knows, Illya bends over the record player, moving the needle to the beginning. _“Again.”_

She does not miss this time, continuing into longer steps and a pirouette. Gaby danced this part in East Berlin; he knows because he watched her perform. As Udo Teller’s daughter, Gabriela Schmidt was the key to finding the lost rocket scientist before the Americans did. Concluding it would be simplest for anyone to smuggle Gaby to her father in the crush of a performance, he saw her dance five times before she quit. All her anger at the Wall channeled into the part of a maiden cursed by day to be a swan — she was magnificent.

Though her technical precision has waned in the intervening years, Gaby remains an emotive dancer. Today her cygnet is determined, playful. Provocative.

She holds an attitude, bare leg toward the ceiling, drawing his eye where only the thin leotard covers the juncture of her thighs. They made love hastily after breakfast, knowing Solo would arrive soon and temperatures would only get hotter. ‘You’ll be a puddle by the end of the day,’ Gaby promised. Heedless of her own sweat, she has missed no opportunity to heat him. Without her tights, he can watch the flex of every muscle, every tendon. Art and athleticism intertwined.

After perfectly executing her part twice more, Gaby shakes out her limbs and starts on an allégro tangent. Sautés, jetés, cabriole — assemblé to fifth position pile and then hold. Her ‘ta-da’ is silent.

Illya twitches a smile. “That is not _Swan Lake_.”

“It is a special addition. Credited to…” She bows gracefully toward him.

He rolls his eyes. “To Russian directors?” he guesses, knowing he is never going to live down Sergey Ivanov.

“Really, choreographed by German.” She gives another sample from the supposed special addition.

“And what is story?” he asks, hoping to catch her out like she always catches him. Or at least give her an opportunity to spread her body écarté like that again.

“One of the swan maidens swims away from the group,” she narrates, choreographing herself as she goes. “She comes upon a giant bear in the woods.” She spins herself toward him, and Illya catches her waist. “This is a paus de deux, you see.”

“I see.” He takes the moment to kiss her pert nose, forgetting he meant to discourage her.

“At first the swan maiden is frightened of the bear.” She covers her eyes and retreats, feet moving rapidly.

“Frightened?” Illya scoffs. “That great hissing bird?”

“He gives chase.” Gaby starts on a chassé, circling him. “The clever swan maiden flies away. But, alas, circumstances conspire and the bear has her cornered.”

He has her by the waist again, and he is her cavalier as she pirouettes in front of him much like he turned her at the boutique. Since she is such an unreliable narrator when it comes to their early history, he takes it upon himself to remind her, “Bear is also forced by circumstance. Still the little swan hisses and hisses at him.”

“Can you blame her? Bears are known to eat swans.” Gaby takes them into an adagio; she performs elegant movements, at times using his body for support. “But the swan maiden didn’t know yet that the bear is also under a terrible curse.”

There she went again, vilifying the career he has worked so hard for. It will be a long time before he can convince her that, in their story, circumstance is a far more accurate evil. “Curse or no curse,” Illya says, “he is well-mannered bear.”

“After a fashion.” Gaby, in penché, admits, “He won’t attack her.”

Illya traces the curve she makes with her spine and buttocks. "Which the little swan learns by beating well-mannered bear half to death with her wings.”

“The bear likes it,” Gaby claims, straightening to stand en pointe. “He goes soft and never growls at the swan again.” She flaps her arms, indicating that he should sweep her into a partnering lift. When he does so, her body is feather light and iron strong. “I’m romanticizing, if you couldn’t tell.”

Illya nudges the back of her neck with his nose. “You are very subtle.”

She extends her arm to curve over his cheek, a classic lover’s pose. “With you?” She dimples. “I wouldn't have gotten anywhere.”

Why would she want to? A swan and a bear — an ill-conceived notion; it is the biggest fault of her narrative. But he has never been brave or selfless enough to catch out his swan maiden on this. He instead blames circumstance, the very thing that brought them together.

He sets Gaby down, and she clasps his biceps. He flexes to earn her grin. She says, “I think it’s imperative for the mission that I should practice lifts.”

Illya picks her up so fast she laughs into his ear.


	3. starlet

Gaby insists they lunch on the roof. So, while she slices vegetables in the kitchenette, Illya dutifully searches the costume loft for a small table and cushions enough for three. He hauls those to the roof, along with the wine and the record player. Gaby feeds him cherry tomatoes and kisses for each trip.

Solo arrives more or less on time and is perturbed neither by the asset’s absence nor by the heat wave. He is dressed in head-to-toe white, perfectly suited to blend in with the artistic set.

“Marvelous,” he hears Solo say, having followed Gaby into the practice room. “Who could work on a fine Parisian afternoon such as this?”

Coming down the rickety loft stairs, Illya asks, “Did you bring the equipment and the garment?”

To Gaby Solo muses, “Whenever I ask a rhetorical question like that, the answer always seems to be Peril.”

Gaby laughs, tying her scarf again with a flourish. “You’d be shocked at how quickly he adjusted to the idea.”

Solo sweeps her bangs and slides on her sunglasses. “With you channeling Miss Hepburn like that, it’s no wonder.”

Illya tries not to steal too long a glance as he walks between them, knowing how much they like to tease him for having what the Americans call ‘a type.’ Even so, he is compelled to defend, “She is accomplished actress.”

“Gaby or Audrey?” Solo inquires, laying on his flattery as thick as the humidity.

“I deserve an Oscar for the Espino Affair and at least a nomination for Istanbul,” Gaby contends. “Oh, but you.” She gushes in her retelling of Solo’s misdeeds in Versailles, as if they weren’t already the only three living witnesses to that unlikely miracle.

Meanwhile, Illya finds the suitcase he is after in the small room off the kitchenette. He makes space for several pendant cameras and pocket-sized tape reels. Outdated compared to the latest Soviet technology but simple enough for a civilian asset to handle.

Setting those aside, he reaches into the garment bag and immediately stuffs the tulle back in. Of all the —

He stomps into the practice room, wispy travesty in hand. “You bring wrong tutu.”

Solo puts a hand to his chest. “Moi? I am the costume designer, for God’s sake.”

“Since when?” Gaby inquires, delighted.

“Since I swanned in there this afternoon,” Solo says, adding a dash of the effete to his characteristic arrogant baring. It is a wonder the thief was ever caught, the way he exudes ownership over everything in his path.

Illya shakes the offensive garment. “Swan dancers wear structured tutus to imitate bird.”

Solo sighs, as if he is the one put out. “I assure you, this is the tutu they’re going with.”

Though he does his best not to reel back, something of his horror must show on his face, because Gaby has a hand pressed to her mouth to cover a grin at his expense.

“Come now, Peril, you have to admit the tulle is more becoming.”

“Nyet. With structured tutu, audience appreciates the dancer’s full leg — ”

“I understand now,” Solo cuts him off, one hand outstretched. To Gaby, he says, “Your man is a pervert.”

Illya blusters, “It is art and — these women are trained athletes — ”

“You conveniently forgot the men,” Solo points out, the picture of leisure with both hands now tucked in his pockets.

Though he fumes, Illya shuts up and lets Gaby save him. “Illya is right. You must have taken the wrong tutu.” She pulls him down for a peck on the cheek. In his ear, on the smallest of breaths, she whispers, “And Solo is right. You are a pervert.” Betrayed, he assumes a rigid posture.

Solo lifts both brows. “Little hot under the collar today?”

Gaby swats Solo’s arm before she takes it. “Both of you stop or you’ll ruin our picnic.” She fixes Solo with the Look.

“My apologies, Peril,” Solo says, magnanimous. “If you’ll give me one of your handy little trackers, I’ll sew it into the right tutu myself.”

“I did not want tutu for asset,” Illya has to admit, fidgeting for the sweat rolling down his back. “I needed to see how Gaby moves in it.”

Solo’s mouth pops open, and Illya braces himself for more ridicule. But he pats Gaby's hand. "My, you two do commit to role play."

The innuendo is so mild Illya is left struck by two things he often underestimates: One, that for all his predilections — on and off the record — there is something altogether wholesome about Napoleon Solo. Two, that abject humiliation is no longer the mission objective of their sparring matches. The look Solo shoots him over Gaby's head is downright goodnatured. 

Leading Solo toward the loft ladder, Gaby calls, “Do bring up the lunch, darling.”

It is worth the hassle of balancing plates up the ladder for the view he is greeted with when he emerges onto the roof. What little breeze there is ruffles the ends of Gaby’s scarf as she gazes out to the Eifel Tower in middle distance. In her chiffon skirt and peasant blouse, she looks nothing so much like a Hollywood starlet on holiday.

A shutter clicks, and Illya snaps toward Solo, who has somehow pilfered his camera. Scowling, he demands, “You are paparazzi, too, now?”

Solo considers that. “Audrey Hepburn and Steve McQueen. Imagine the headlines.”

“The scandal,” Gaby agrees, moving out of her pose to pour the wine. “And Rock Hudson would make it quite the celebrity love nest.” She hands a glass off to Solo first.

Illya takes his glass, looking into the white wine half-hoping it might at any moment transform itself into something palatable like whiskey.

“To Sunday joie de vivre,” Gaby toasts, pouting a bit so he’ll play along.

Solo raises his glass. “To keeping the team together.”

Illya offers, “To Gaby.” Because she did the heavy lifting to return them from their respective organizations. Because anything is palatable when he’s drinking to her.

Gaby puts on a record, and she and Solo chat about absolutely nothing in a dizzying rapid-fire. Illya sits back, contributing sense when it is needed and accepting the wine poured for him.

He takes his camera from Solo to snap faceless shots of wine labels and excitable hand gestures — these Gaby will be able to keep without fear that they could be used against her. The rest of the photographs Illya must develop and destroy, their permanence as fleeting as Sunday joie de vivre.


	4. sultana

Deliciously nude, Gaby stands up from her supine pose against his bare chest. Illya watches her with one eye closed, hopeful she will take pity on him and lay back down. Rising temperatures, free flowing wine, and semi-recent orgasms have rendered him groggy. Gaby is the opposite; energized by the sun, she holds out her arms to the windows like an opening flower.

Going to the record player, she puts on a jazz number. She comes to center, beginning a stretch. Without her leotard compressing her breasts and covering her sex, every movement becomes sinfully eroticized.

Both of Illya’s eyes are open, his desire for a nap fading fast.

He can hardly decide where to look there is so much to observe. Gaby is subtle in body if not will. Her beauty is in symmetry, in lean lines and supple muscle. Illya could photograph Gabriella Teller for hours and fail to capture all of her alluring angles. His gaze finds her feet, red-marked toes flexing as she holds one leg in the air. The pose reminds him of back alley Parisian shops, so handy as drop-off sites because of their illicit reputations. ‘La Ballerina Erotiqué,’ Gaby’s print might read. Ten francs. Twenty were she wearing her shoes.

The thought flushes him, decadent even by this day’s standards. He sits up from the cushions, legs crossed like a yogi but with none of their famed self-control. Accusations of perversion fresh in his mind, he only manages, “You will get splinter.” He realizes too late that the floor is buffed smooth by use and design.

Gaby, folded all the way over, looks up to assess his carefully neutral face. “You’ll think of a more convincing reason,” she concludes.

He wracks his heat-addled brain, but can’t for the life of him come up with one. Finally, low, he admits, “I want to see you in them. Like this.”

Gaby looks down on him the way a queen might a loyal subject and favors him with her approval. “All right.” She stands as she puts on her shoes, bringing her knees up one after the other to tie pale pink ribbons over her flexing ankles.

Swaying, she walks in en pointe over to the bar. She starts her usual warm-up routine. Aware of his thickening cock, he gets up to stand in his customary spot. From this angle, he can watch the firm clench of her smooth ass, and, in the mirror, the laboring muscles of her thighs. He is taken by her color — a deep gold on her stomach and breasts that fades into deeper bronze down her long limbs.

He follows the ripple of muscle as she completes the movements of her routine, contained for all their complexities. His camera is with his devices, but, out of respect and no small amount of embarrassment, he contents himself with memory.

There is no hesitation in her as she dips into fluid stretches. Neither sweat nor nudity gives her any pause. Gaby raises en pointe and holds, finding his gaze in the mirror. He has no control over the actions of his reflection, which darts glances from her face to her legs to the triangle of pink flesh between the pert curves of her ass.

"Touch yourself," she decrees, voice a husky whisper. Gaby often charges him with his own pleasure this way, and he complies.

Gaby lifts her leg onto the bar, baring her cunt for him. His grip tightens for the sheen. Usually close-trimmed, she is shaved smooth for the leotard. Her body folds double as she spreads over her leg. When she straightens, she skims her fingertips up her leg the way he would, reveling in the silk and smooth. She switches legs and he thinks of her flexibility, all the ways he could have her —

His balls shudder, and he takes his hand off his cock.

“No critiques of my form?” Gaby inquires, and Illya approaches her as she has prompted — with his hands tucked behind his back as he so often has in his role of Instruktor Petrov.

“Your form is…” Her ankle rests on the bar, and he squeezes her foot through her worn practice shoes. He repeats the squeeze down her leg then kneads the muscle along her inner thigh. “Adequate.”

Gaby tosses her head, loosened bun bobbing.

He angles her chin to better see into the darkening pools of her eyes. Reaching out to trace the under curve of his pectorals, she smiles at all that is hers to command. Illya has a sudden sympathy for the many consorts of Yekaterina Velikaya. What a fearsome privilege to be responsible for the pleasure of an empress.

Rasping, he instructs, _“Now you.”_

Gaby slides a hand from her sternum, using two fingers to stroke along her clit.

 _“Hold there.”_ He goes over to take an Ottoman cushion from their nest, returning to drop it at her feet. He kneels to better inspect the swollen bud she displays for him.

With her free hand, she glides through his hair and tugs. “You’re as greedy as a sultan.”

“My sultana bade me drink wine,” he excuses. She is plush and glistening, but he wants her more ready still. _“One finger. Slow.”_

A manicured finger, so thin, slips between her petite folds. She slides in and out leisurely, revealing her wetness with every stroke. Shoes on, eyes half-lidded, jaw clenched in pleasure. La Ballerina Erotiqué. None of the French models he thumbed through — surreptitiously, playing his part at drop sites; perfunctorily, lying flat on safe house beds — are her equal.

 _“Another."_ It catches in his throat.

As she slips in a second finger, he grips the crease of her extended leg and the thigh of her base leg. There is already a fine tremor there.

_“En pointe.”_

Gaby takes his challenge with defiance, lifting onto her toes and guiding her leg off the bar into a curved position. Her triumphant smirk falters when he opens his hand over her belly, his thumb finding her exposed clit. She aids in her own undoing, fingers working between her spread folds. Her trembling weakens her knees.

 _“Engage your center,”_ he advises, as one would an amateur.

“Oh, hush,” she says and slips her fingers in his mouth.

Locking eyes, he licks her clean before chasing the taste of her to its source.

When the flat of his tongue finds her clit, Gaby teeters and hisses, “Scheisse.”

He draws from her, using the burn of her calf muscles as a guide. She trembles in earnest, so he rearranges his arms to brace her. He rolls her clit over on his tongue and sucks in the same staccato pulse of her thighs.

Letting out a cry, Gaby drops. He is prepared, pulling back to catch her against his shoulders and chest. He gives her no time to even her breath, hooking one of her legs over his shoulder and returning to her heat. He holds her at her ankle, tracing between satin ribbons as the leather heel of her other shoe digs into his back.

Illya finishes first, hand jerking his cock. After she shakes apart around him, after they have kissed and sucked in the hot afterglow, he stays bowing before her and takes his time unlacing the bows of her shoes.


	5. sun goddess

The heat wakes Illya. Sunlight and Gaby soaking into him, he is slow to squint open his eyes. A warm back greets him. In the small space between their bodies, hot air radiates from the perspiration sheening her skin. The fine hairs that escaped her bun mat her neck, still damp from her last turn at the sink. His own is wet with beads of sweat. Mid-afternoon sunlight pours through the window at his back, and Gaby has wisely rolled herself into what shade he offers.

Illya takes that as an excuse to lay there with her for a moment longer, watching the even lift of her shoulders. Her spine curves in sleep, her body’s natural rebellion against the rigid discipline demanded of it by the mission. That he, playing his part, has demanded of her every day save this one long, hot Sunday. It isn’t long before her muscles begin to twitch. The woman with whom he shares this makeshift bed has adapted to restlessness, body and soul.

He buys her a few more minutes of sleep by standing from the cushions gently, leaving his linen trousers where the cuff lays half under her arm. He angles the fan to better advantage the cross-breeze circulating from the roof access to the open windows, then goes to fetch them water and wine. He returns to the practice room, too, with a plate of food, though he knows in this humidity it will be sunset before he can persuade Gaby to eat again.

While he arranges things on the small table they have appropriated from the Ottoman set pieces stashed in the loft, she makes a production of rousing — long sighs that turn into deep stretches that bare her breasts — until she is ready to sit up.

For all that effort, she is still only half-awake when her eyes alight on him. Illya cannot help the slight exaggeration in his gait as she takes in his nudity. Rising to her knees, she accepts the glass of water and drinks it down, but does not budge over to let him back beside her.

Instead, she sets the glass aside and pinches her brows together. Scrutinizing his frame, she makes low noises in her throat to make sure he doesn’t miss the fact that he’s being parodied. “Your form is…adequate,” she drawls, conclusive. He stands in front of her, feet braced apart, and smirks at the open hunger behind her eyes — then remembers the pinpoint accuracy of her impressions. If he was ever able to conceal his desire from Gaby, it has been a long time since.

 _“Turn,”_ she commands in Russian, on the cusp of a smile that he would like to bring to life.

His knee-jerk refusal to open himself up to ridicule keeps him locked to the spot. He searches her pout for malice, but it seems to have melted out of her. So, he rotates in increments, watching her over stiff shoulders and preparing for her laughter.

But she merely dimples, arms raised in reward. He lowers to his knees, joining her in the space she makes for him. Gaby drops back onto her elbows, head tilted and dimples deepening as she squints in the light. He sighs as he takes her in, takes one of her ankles onto his lap.

Using the pad of his thumb, he massages her instep, careful with new callouses and bruised toes. Her head lulls back. Illya raises her foot, both thumbs pressing with gentle firmness. He has long admired the strong bones and delicate sweep of her long dancer’s feet. Set between paws built for brute force the intricacy of a foot that can produce such miracles of movement is enough to inspire a reverent kiss placed on the pad of her foot.

Still, Gaby does not laugh at him. Expression as languid as her repose, she slips her toes carefully from the point of his nose to the part of his lips. He kisses her toes and realizes his appreciation of her feet and his obsession with tasting her have reached their natural apex. She’s already there, he thinks. Gaby and her indulgent smile.

He massages her ankle, doubts forming in his mind — Did Lefebvre ever taste her this way? Is this a ritual part and parcel of the unbalanced pairing of dancer and instructor? Illya looks to Gaby’s face for answers but finds he does not need them. The light that falls across her face turns the color of her eyes into sweet syrup he melts into.

Images of her en pointe fueling his sincere appreciation, Illya kisses the calloused tip of her big toe, the flat of his tongue curving around the pad. He sucks, drawing a soft giggle out of her. He does it again, and the tone of her laughter is so delighted he cannot mind it. He works his tongue between each of her toes, down the swirl of her foot. He ends at her heel, biting the thickened skin there ever so sharply before leaving that foot on his shoulder so he can pick up her other.

Through his ministrations, he watches her absorb his tongue soothing her well-worked skin. Gaby is so rarely content with passive pleasures it excites but does not surprise Illya when the foot on his shoulder lowers to his chest, his thigh, his lap. He holds in a shuddering breath as she works her way from scraping tingles into his inner thighs to toeing his cock, redirecting blood flow. He tongues over her other toes, humming into them in gratitude when she uses a delicate arch to stimulate his shaft. He is sucking on her littlest toes when she gently compels him to release her foot, smiling for the soft pop. She rests both feet on the center of his chest, nudging him back to mirror her repose.

Eyebrow lifted in play, she settles both arches around his shaft and strokes. The calloused softness of her feet is a pleasant sensation, but it’s her game little grin that thickens his cock. He lets her experiment with pressure, angle, telling her with low sounds how it feels.

On a particularly favorable rumble, she tosses back her head and the light strikes her mouth. He wants to kiss her where the golden sun warms her full bottom lip. Gaby sees that want, too, her tongue darting out. Setting her feet down by the ankles, Illya pushes to his knees to arch into that golden light. The sun’s rays and Gaby’s hands heating his shoulders, he draws that kiss from her.

Sitting back, he pulls her with him so she perches on one of his folded legs. Their kisses are slow, their wandering hands void of impatience. The light bakes her dewy skin caramel, and he takes to her neck for the sweet and the salt.

Gaby pulls back to squint a grin he is able to mirror with ready ease. She trails over his relaxed face with her fingers. Pronounces, “So lazy today.” Gaby radiates praise and faint arrogance, a sun goddess with a beatific smile. Reaching her arms over her head, she rolls her shoulders. Illya follows to worship the stretch of skin over her ribs, then her spine as she folds over. His woman is everything supple and smooth, hot and pliant and —

The wet warmth of her tongue slides over the head of his cock.

And so, so benevolent.

She makes more room for herself by nudging him back. Bracing himself with one hand, Illya slides the other down the long line of her neck, massaging there as she gently works him over with the graceful movements of her lips and fingers. He sinks, groaning, into the swirl of her tongue and the softness of her back, losing track of the world beyond heat and pressure.

A flare of tension catches him off guard, and he moans for the suddenness of his need and his inability to reach his discipline through the trance she has put him in. He cups her chin, and she releases him with an echo of his earlier pop. His cock pulses at the sheen on her lips, the syrup in her eyes.

“We have all day,” his sun goddess soothes and coaxes him to lie back so she can finish bestowing her blessing.

But taste and touch are amplified by the nearness of completion, and there is a greed in him he can’t possibly deny. She indulges him, letting him kiss and suck and arrange her as he pleases. He builds an alter of cushions for her to lie against, thighs together, toes touching. Gaby would be demure were it not for the hazy gleam in her eyes. Her knees part revealing glossy pink. Elegance and obscenity — he wants to capture her on film, but it would be sacrilege to destroy such an image and heresy to keep it.

Her thumb finds the line between his brows to remind him that the troubles of tomorrow do not exist today.

Gaby spreads her knees further, and he lowers himself between them. Her insteps curving against his sides, he enters her shallowly. As he rocks forward and back, her hot, taut cunt suctions around him. They grasp onto each other’s slickened skin, her at his shoulders, him around her hips. She lifts a leg, and he trails one hand from the back of her thigh, up past her knee, and to her ankle, still rocking. He slides out when he takes up her other ankle to hold both her legs against his shoulder. Angling up to find the space between her clamped thighs, he parts her again and they share a moan for the pressure, the heat.

He skims along her anklebone, kisses the pads of her feet, and mouths over her toes as she comes gently around his cock. He strokes as deeply as she can take him at this angle, warning her with his gasps when he is close. Gaby encourages him with her hips, her soft sounds. Illya finishes with a moan into those powerful, dainty feet, sunlight trailing clean sweat down his back.


	6. storyteller

In the setting sun, Illya sways with Gaby to Etta James’s “A Sunday Kind of Love.” For the second time that day, he hauled the heavy record player up to the roof. How does the woman nuzzled into his chest always make these nuisances worth it?

The sky around the Eifel Tower is lit up in orange and red. They both know that it is curfew, that she should be getting back to the hotel with the other ballerinas. Illya keeps meaning to say so but finds himself letting her go only to pick up the needle and play the song again. Gaby sighs into his sternum, winding her arms all the way around his back. He leans down, nose pressed in her hopelessly messy bun, to hold her there.

“Illya,“ she starts, grip loosening.

“Tell me about Berlin School.”

Gaby peeks up at him, one eye narrowed. “Well, what about?”

He closes his eyes, inhaling her. Though they washed each other frequently in the small restroom, the mingled scent of their day's exhertions lingers on them both. “Anything.”

So, she tells him about the time she and her accomplices tricked their instructors into sending multiple girls to buy oranges for a party. Oranges they then smuggled into East Berlin and used to rule the schoolyard.

He hums at the appropriate intervals, drifting with her voice as they sway and sway. He is lazy today and groggy and, if he is honest with himself, exhausted. Since the moment he left her in West Berlin, he has been forced to prove himself — grueling interrogations and punishments disguised as psychiatric and performance evaluations. He can see the reason for it; on paper, he is a defection risk the KGB cannot afford. So he outperformed, swore every allegiance. He thought only of protecting Gaby, never that he would be allowed to have her back.

Her story finished, she tries again to part them.

“You were found out," Illya guesses. "How did you wiggle out of punishment?” he prompts.

“That is actually the best part,” Gaby replies, and his storyteller launches into a description of how she mounted a campaign for forgiveness hinged on the guilt she claims all Wessis carry. An impressive enough plot for a professional agent, never mind a thirteen-year-old ballerina.

With her will and her brilliance, Gaby saved UNCLE and made this day possible for them — his goddess of sun and Sundays and heat and wine and dance. 

He wonders if she really believes they have won, or if pretending so convincingly is just another of her impossible strengths. Asking outright would shatter the illusion. He tries instead, hesitant, “The bear and the swan maiden, you never said how their story ends.” He lets Gaby back just far enough to look at him.

For the first time that day, he thinks he sees the wheels turning behind her smile.

Her eyes flick down, falling on his lips.

They kiss for so long, and her fingers running through his hair are so soothing, he forgets she hasn’t answered him. He lays her on the cushions, kissing her as the sun gentles away and the sky turns dark.

Only then does he think of the consequences. She will have to go out into the street at night. She will be questioned by the chaperones. She, for all her contagious surety, may find the asset loose in the wind. He promises to shadow her to the hotel and be there if she needs assistance. 

Gaby stands up, hanging onto his hand. She looks at him a long time. The haze is gone from her eyes. “All the swan maidens are freed at the end of _Swan Lake._  It’s the bear who needs saving.”

He lifts his arm high to spin her as she likes, enamored. “So, how does the maiden rescue her cursed bear?” He wants her to narrate him a dream circumstance cannot touch.

But the sun has set. The spell is over.

She shrugs. “Maybe the bear doesn't think he's cursed. Maybe he wants to be a bear. He stays in the forest, pining for the maiden from afar as long as they live."

Illya lets her trail out of his grip. “You Germans love your tragedies,” he accuses.

“Cautionary tales for the naive,” she throws back. But she pauses before disappearing down the ladder. “Heute war schön, Illya.”

Her story comes true; he is too soft to growl at her again. “Segodnya byl krasivyy,” he agrees.

There is no moon or stars to light the rooftop, only the pale city lights. He waits in the shadows to watch her back to the hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their exchange at the end: "Today was beautiful."  
> ["Sunday Kind of Love" by Etta James](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjiBj014t7g)


End file.
